Table of Contents

Prologue-isms
1: Athletes in the Midst
2: The Athlete Within
3: The Not-So-Simple "Why" of Stuff
4: The Question of Work
5: A Numbers Game Played with Hearts
6: How Endurance Sports Explain Speed and Age
7: Our Relationship with Our Bodies
8: Illness and Injury in Endurance Sports
9: The Physically Challenged Question
10: Getting to the Heart of the Matter
11: More about Meaning and Motive
12: How Endurance Sports Explain Our Sense of Place: Ruminations on the IRONMAN (R) Triathlon and Kona
13: The Question of Indoor Sports
14: How Triathlon Explains the Environment
15: Sport and Travel
16: The Athlete Hero Rising and Falling
17: Technology in Sport
18: How Sports Style Explains Style
19: On Fear and Fish
20: Sports Labels, Common Sense, and Decisions of a Sporting Nature
21: God at the 20-Mile Mark
22: Children in the Street
23: Finding the Golden Mean: One Man's Sporting Relationship with Right and Wrong
24: On the People Behind the Athlete
25: The Sports Icon: Why Pre Matters
26: Fandom
27: A Good Story
Afterword

About the Author

Scott Tinley is a former world-class professional athlete who had competed in over 400 triathlons (winning close to 100 of them), winning the Ironman World Championship twice and the Ironman World Series three times. Scott was inducted into both the Triathlon and Ironman Hall of Fame upon retirement in 1999. He holds a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies from Claremont Graduate University and a position as Lecturer in the School of Exercise and Nutritional Sciences at San Diego State University. He founded and developed the sport of off-road triathlon and continues to co-own and manage the longest running off-road triathlon in the world. He has done television commentary for CBS, ESPN, and ABC, been a contributing writer for CBSNews.com and written for Sports Illustrated, Men's Journal, Triathlete Magazine, and Outside Magazine. He has also previously written five books within the sports genre. Scott lives near the beach in Del Mar, California and on a ranch west of Gaviota, California with his family.

Reviews

"Scott Tinley has penned a masterful, larger-than-life valentine to a sport that he long ago helped define via his own performance and panache, and in these pages, triathletes of all ages and abilities will find insight and wisdom creatively probing that one question deeply in need of answering: why tri?" -William R. Katovsky, Founder, Triathlete Magazine

"...one of the hardest working, winningest triathletes of all time." -Slowtwitch.com

"... the ultimate multisport athlete." -Triathlete Magazine

"His work ethic and consistency made him one of the most durable and feared triathletes of all time." -Triathlete Magazine

"No one defined the free spirit and driving force of IRONMAN (R) like Scott Tinley." -Ironman.com